Nothing But Hype?

R&B singer Ayi Jihu is planning a massive invasion of the West, and her songs have scored “100 million downloads” in China. The claims sounded dubious to the China Music Radar blog, which looked into the supposed star.

Ayi’s PR representative said she is a member of the Yi ethnic minority centered in southwestern China and currently divides her time between China and Great Britain, where her parents are said to reside.

She’s already been interviewed by the BBC, Sky News, the Daily Mail and the Sun, and has been dubbed “China’s Madonna” by the British press.

The folks at CMR thought it strange that they had never heard of Ayi and started looking into her.

She is the only artist signed to her record company, and despite her PR company’s claim of 100 million downloads, CMR could not find a single one after conducting an MP3 search.

Also, almost all the articles they found about Ayi on the Internet were identical and all the videos of the artist on the Web were uploaded by her PR company.

CMR concludes that Ayi Jihu is “a cynical attempt by a PR company and record executives to … fool the Western market.”